Pieter de la Court
Pieter de la Court the Younger (* 1618 in Leiden ; † 28 May 1685 in Amsterdam ) was a Dutch economist, businessman and political philosopher. He was a determined advocate of republican state ideas in the Netherlands and part of Johan de Witt .
He also uses Dutch translations of his French family name as a form of name: Pieter van den Hooft or Pieter van der Hove. Several of his publications are only identified by one of the author's abbreviations VDH, VH and DC.
Life
De la Court was the son of Protestant refugees from Flanders who settled in Leiden around 1613. His father was the clothing manufacturer Pieter de la Court the Elder (around 1593–1657), his mother Jeanne des Planques. Pieter de la Court the Younger studied at the University of Leiden and was on a cavalier tour of Europe (London, Saumur, Geneva, Basel) from 1641 to 1643 , as reported in a diary published in 1928. On his return he founded a successful clothing trading company with his brother Johan. He was friends with Johan Eleman, member of the Leiden council and friend of Johan de Witt, and married his sister-in-law Elisabeth Tollenaar in 1657. After her untimely death in 1661 he married Catharina van der Voort from a wealthy Amsterdam merchant family (and related to Johan de Witt). With her he had two children Magdalena and Pieter de la Court van der Voort (1664–1739). In 1665 he moved to Amsterdam, where he worked with his brothers-in-law. They tried to compete with the East India Company by submitting a petition that their monopoly should only apply to the voyage around the Cape of Good Hope. In 1668 they funded an exploration trip to the Arctic to explore an alternative sea route around Siberia .
His books appeared anonymously, but were ascribed to him during his lifetime. Today it is assumed that his brother Johan (1622-1660) was the author of several books - the political philosophical texts Consideratien van Staet and Politike Discoursen - and that Johan de Witt and others also contributed to his main polemical work Interest van Holland (published 1662). In it he attributes the economic success of the Netherlands to competition from free markets and the republican form of government. The book was then a bestseller with eleven editions up to 1671 and was also translated into other languages (1665 into German, 1702 into English and 1709 into French). The book also made him the mouthpiece of the republican party around Johan de Witt, which then ruled the Netherlands until its fall in 1672 and was directed against the Orange , who traditionally provided the quasi-monarchical governors whom de Witt wanted to abolish. In addition, it emphasized the primacy of the rich province of Holland over the other provinces and represented a policy of peace to the outside world that was supposed to serve commercial interests. Monopolies like those of the guilds and the East and West India Companies were portrayed as damaging to free competition and the establishment of a large merchant and war fleet was recommended.
The book was influential well into the 18th century, among others with the French Physiocrats and Adam Smith, and generally with regard to republican state ideas in America, England and the Netherlands.
After the fall and murder of Johan de Witt and his brother by an angry mob of supporters of the Orange following the invasion of Louis XIV in the Netherlands, which the Dutch could only counter by opening the dikes and flooding the country, fled de la Court to Antwerp . A year later in 1673, however, he returned and continued his commercial activity. He is buried in the Nieuwe Kerk .
There are several portraits of him: by an unknown person in the museum in Leiden in 1637, by Godfried Schalcken (in Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, 1679), by Abraham Lambertsz. van den Tempel 1667 in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and by Frans van Mieris the Elder (Amsterdam, private collection?). Pictures of his parents by Pierre Dubourdieu are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Faculty of Social Sciences at Leiden University is located in a building named after him. His descendants were a well-known family in the Netherlands. Like his son Pieter de la Court van der Voort, he was a great art collector.
Fonts
-
Interest van Holland, ofte gronden van Hollands-Welvaren. Amsterdam 1662 (under the abbreviation VDH)
- Revised new edition under the title: Aanwysing der Heilsame politike gronden en maximen van de Republike van Holland en West-Vriesland. Leiden and Rotterdam 1669
- German translation: Interest from Holland or Fondamenten from Holland's welfare. anonymous translator, 1665, FU Berlin
- French translation of part of it in: Mémoires de Jean de Witt par mad. de Zoutelande. The Hague 1702, Regensburg 1709
- English translation: The true interest and political maxims of the republick of Holland and West Friesland. Written by John de Witt and other great men in Holland, London 1702
- English translation: The true interest and political maxims, of the republic of Holland. Written by John de Witt. Translated from the original Dutch. To which is prefixed, (never before printed) historical memoirs of the illustrious brothers Cornelius and John de Witt. By John Campbell. London 1746
- History of the Gravelicke Regeering in Holland. Amsterdam 1662 (political pamphlet, as VH)
-
Sinryke fabulen, Verklaart en toegepast tot alderley zeede-lessen, dienstig om waargenomen te are in het Menschelijke en burgerlijke leeven. Amsterdam 1685
- In verse by J. van Hoogstraaten, Amsterdam 1731
- Het welvaren van Leiden. Manuscript 1659, printed in Leiden in 1845 and in Leiden in 1911 (Ed. F. Driessen)
- Felix Driessen: De irritation of the de la Courts: 1641-1700-1710. Leiden 1928 (travel diaries also by Pieter de la Court)
Possibly by his brother Johan, but also attributed to him:
- Consideratien en examples van Staat. Omtrent de fondamenten van allerley Regeringen. Amsterdam 1661, 6th edition 1662 (as VH)
- Consideratien van Staet ofte Polityke Weegschaal. Amsterdam 1661, 2nd edition 1662 (as VH)
- Political Discourses. Leiden 1662, Amsterdam 1662 (as DC)
literature
- PJ Blok, PC Molhuysen, entry in: Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek. Part 7, 1927
- Jonathan Israel : Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750, Oxford University Press, 2001
- O. van Rees: Over de Politieke Gronden en Maximen, enz. van P. de la Court . Utrecht 1851
- Arthur Weststeijn: Commercial republicanism in the dutch golden age. The political thought of Johan and Pieter de la Court . Brill, Leiden 2012
- Arthur Weststeijn: De radicale republiek. Johan en Pieter de la Court, dwarse thinkers uit de Gouden Eeuw . B. Bakker, Amsterdam 1st – 2nd Edition 2013. - Book review by: Marcel Hulspas, in: Volkskrant, July 27, 2013, online. ( Memento from January 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims, of the Republic of Holland, 1662, English translation, Liberty Fund
- Texts and biographies at the Digital Library of the Netherlands, Dutch
- Entry on Pieter de la Court in the virtual personal lexicon of international relations (PIBv), edited by Ulrich Menzel , Institute for Social Sciences at the Technical University of Braunschweig
Individual evidence
- ↑ Blok, Molhuysen, Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek 1927, based on a Sotheby's 2007 catalog for a picture by Jan Steen owned by de la Court's, pdf , father and son sat in Leiden 1676-1679 for portraits of Schalcken
- ↑ Blok, Molhuysen, Nieuw Nederlandsch biografisch woordenboek 1927
- ↑ Arthur Weststeijn Commercial republicanism in the dutch golden age , Brill 2012, p. 199
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Court, Pieter de la |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch economist and philosopher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1618 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Suffer |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 28, 1685 |
| Place of death | Amsterdam |